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ideas at your fingertips. … I love Pinterest. I want Pinterest to sponsor me. And you know what’s funny? The first episode aired, and nobody wanted the dreamcatcher. “That’s a Pinterest tattoo.” And I was like, “Give me that thing. Give me that Pinterest tattoo, and I’m going to win tattoo of the day with this dreamcatcher.” And I did.

What’s it like to have people from all over commenting on your work now in conjunction with this big TV show?

Let me show you something. Every time I open my Instagram—I just checked it like five minutes before you got here—it’s like this. I posted this photo a couple of hours ago, four hours ago, and I’ve got 50 comments and 1,000 likes. My Instagram—I started Ink Master with maybe 7,000 followers. And I went up to 14.2 thousand, just like that.

Has business been busier since you’ve been back?

It’s still the same. I book out two or three months all the time. I think I’m finishing December, and then I’m going to close my books until June, just to let me kind of catch up with all of my projects. I’ve never been that person who says, “Book’s closed.” But I’m getting to the point where I need to focus on my big projects. If you outlined a back piece, I don’t want you to wait six months for every session. I’m like, “All right. We’re lining out the back. We’re going to do two sittings a month, and we’ll knock it out.”

So I’m sure there are Ink Master things you can and can’t talk about. What do you think of the challenges that are art endeavors but not tattooing?

I don’t like the challenges. It’s TV filler. That’s all it is. Some of them were interesting. I’ll say that. But I don’t really care for them.

There’s a different dynamic on the show than you get in a tattoo shop—the interaction between artists and the clients or, well, you call them “canvases.”

“I realIzed at I don’t call them one poInt that canvases. It’s weird to me.

tattooIng Is You’re doing changIng wIth more for them because they’re or wIthout me.” part of the show, though. tony medellin I’ve heard you and others suggest that.

You know, I treated them just like I treated everyone else. … If you feel good and you feel comfortable, then you’re going to be a bit more easygoing with my ideas. I can persuade you on something a little bit better. Your ideas are good, but I have an idea to make it better. So I was just really nice to all of them.

But it’s weird that they don’t get to listen to music or read a book, which a person would do during a normal session.

It’s the worst.

I’m not trying to be a jerk, but do you think it makes people, like, whine about it more? I try to keep my shit together when getting tattooed—but it’s all weirdly quiet on the show.

Absolutely. You need music. You need something to keep you entertained and calm. I hated that. And then you can hear everyone talking. It was a pain in the ass. The environment was not ideal. And I was one of those people who were thinking, “This is easy. I’ll be fine.” … But for everyone who talks shit about that show, especially tattoo artists who think they could go on and just win, I guarantee you, slim to none will actually make it. It’s rough. It’s rough. It takes three to five days to film an episode. And those are usually 12- to 15-hour days.

How have people responded to your participation on the show since your post in May?

Surprisingly, everyone’s been super supportive. I thought I was going to catch shit for changing the way I think. But I admitted in the post, I was like, “Look, I thought a certain way, and I don’t think that way anymore.” And, you know what? If you’re good at something, and you genuinely have a chance to win, you’d be stupid not to take that chance. Ω